


My Favorite Monster

by everyperfectsummer



Series: Coldwave week [5]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, abuse doesn't just come from parents, abused adult, and should be treated seriously regardless of the source, but I swear the actual fic is well formatted!, but doesn't come from mick don't worry, only positive coldwave in this fic, the tags are in a weird order bc ao3 won't let me fix them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11828748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: Some of his scars come from being a son. Some come from being a criminal. Some come from something else.





	My Favorite Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for references to abuse.

There’s a knife in front of him, and he grins internally, at how easy they’re making this. He runs forward, straight at the boy holding the knife, impaling himself on it. He’s in pain, and blood’s gushing from his abdomen, but things are ok now. He’s bleeding.

 

He gets tackled from behind, and soon he’s at the bottom of a pile of boys all attacking him and it hurts, but not half as much as it hurts to have one of the central pillars of his world ripped away from him. The sun sets in the west, leaves turn orange in the fall, and people stop hurting you once you start bleeding. Only this time, they didn’t.

 

He gets rescued, a huge kid wading into the mess, pulling the other boys off of him and screaming for the guards all the while.

 

“What the hell?” the boy, whose name turns out to be Mick, asks him. “Why’d you do that? Stab _yourself_?”

 

Len shakes his head, refusing to answer.

 

“I’ll figure it out,” Mick says, and Len internally dares him to try.

 

He finally does figure out out, decades later.

* * *

 

 

They’re on the sofa, bodies pressed together, when Len suddenly gasps, not in passion but in pain, and Mick pulls away. “You ok?”

 

“Yes,” Len says, “we can keep going.”

 

Mick just looks at him, and Len rolls his eyes before pulling up his shirt, revealing the bruising underneath.

 

“You told me you were with Lisa these past few days,” Mick says, tone accusing.

 

“I was!”

 

“And you got these bruises from?”

 

“Lisa,” Len says, still upset at the implication that he’d lie to Mick.

 

“You were sparring with Lisa?”

 

“No, she just got mad,” Len says, only realizing his mistake when Mick’s eyes widen. He’s been open with Mick about Dad’s abuse for so long, he’d forgotten to keep silent about Lisa’s. Not that it’s abuse, from Lisa. She’s his sister; fighting’s normal. It’s not like violence from a parent.

 

“Lisa hurt you because she got mad?”

 

“It’s not like Dad,” Len says, “and besides, it’s not that often now that we’re adults.”

 

“Lisa shouldn’t be hurting you at _all_ ,” Mick says, eyes both sad and furious.

 

“She mostly doesn’t,” Len says, mouth quirky up in a grin. “I run a lot faster than she does, and, for a criminal who shoots things, her aim is _terrible.”_

 

Mick doesn’t share in the mirth. “She shouldn’t be trying to hurt you in the first place.”

 

“The bright side is that she panics and stops as soon as I start bleeding, same as Dad used to,” Len says. “She actually gets really sweet, afterwards, brings me disinfectant, asks if I’m ok...I don’t know, it’s nice.”

 

Mick just looks at him, eyes wide and wounded, as though Mick’s the one who’s had Lisa try to stab his eye out with pencil. Then his face changes as realization dawns. “The fight in juvie. The first fight, when you stabbed yourself on his knife.”

 

“He stabbed _me_ ,” Len says reflexively, and, seeing Mick’s face, admits, “Ok, so I thought they’d stop once I was bleeding. Dumb. Just because she and Dad stopped with blood doesn’t mean other people do, and I’m glad I learned that in juvie instead of in a real fight. Can you imagine, thinking you’re a good fighter because you’re an easy bleeder? It might’ve been better if they hadn’t stopped there, honestly.”

 

“Neither of them should have _started,_ ” Mick says, and he’s getting angry, angry at Lisa and Lewis, not Len, but it’s still freaking Len out and he needs him to stop.

 

“She told me once,” Len says, trying to make Mick understand, trying to calm him down, “that you either hurt people physically, or verbally, and verbally is permanent.”

 

Mick raises an eyebrow, pointing at the bruise that had started this entire conversation.

 

“That was an accident,” Len says, “she doesn’t intend to actually do damage, she just wants to hurt me.” He hears his words as he says them and bites his lip, aware that he sounds like an idiot.

 

“She heard of the option where you don’t hurt anyone?” Mick says, his tone angrier than Len’s comfortable with.

 

Len shrugs. “In her mind, her options are verbal or physical and the verbal stuff from Dad hurt worse than the physical did.” His mouth twists down. “I don’t know. She thinks I’m more like Dad than she is, called me that once. I told her that at least I don’t hit the people I love, and she said – she said she’d never done that.”

 

“Gaslighting,” Mick says softly, and Len nods.

 

“That’s the worst part. The gaslighting from Dad was bad, but from Lisa – she’s supposed to be on my side.”

 

“Yeah,” Mick says, softly, before the two of them fade into silence.

 

“In her defense,” Len offers into the silence, “she’s not as violent as she used to be.”

 

“Len,” Mick says, voice broken, “that still means that she’s violent, and that’s not ok.”

 

Len doesn’t know how to explain to him that he knows it’s not ok, and that it _is_ ok, doesn’t know how to justify reconciling the two, and stays silent.

 

Mick opens his arms, an invitation for a hug that Len can take or leave, and Len practically hurtles into Mick’s grasps, enveloping himself in warmth. “We’ll figure this out,” Mick tells him, “I promise.”

 

“Ok,” Len tells Mick, not sure whether he believes him, but sure that he wants to. “Ok.”

 

* * *

 

Three years later, he still has scars. From being a criminal. From being a son. From being a brother. But he doesn’t have any new ones from the latter two. He still can’t stand for Mick to hold anything while he’s mad, still can’t really stand for Mick to be mad at all, still loves and fears his sister, but. He loves her as much as he always has, and fears her a lot less than he used to. Things are better. They’re not perfect, never will be, but they’re better.

**Author's Note:**

> In which I continue to blatantly project all my experiences onto Leonard Snart. This is basically all stolen from a recent conversation with a dear friend. Title quote also comes from said friend. Resolving my feelings about my family by writing it out because I am a mature human being with stellar coping mechanisms.  
> Remember: this is one experience with abuse, and probably won't reflect yours, and that's ok. All abuse experiences are valid.


End file.
